After over 40 Muppet Vaults (yes, 40!), we’ve given spotlights to Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, and The Great Gonzo, so it was only a matter of time before we gave proper attention to the frog that started it all.

Join us on Sunday, March 22nd at 7:30pm (doors at 7:00pm) in Brooklyn, NY for Muppet Vault: Kermit the Frog! We’ll be sharing our favorite videos starring featuring everyone’s favorite Muppet Show host (sorry Nigel)! You’ll be seeing some favorites and rarities from Kermit’s career from Sesame Street, the Muppet movies, and more. And as always, we’ll have trivia, prizes, and drink specials. All that for only $8! That’s less than the cost of an old green coat and two ping pong balls.

The show will be held at Union Hall, located at 702 Union Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY. The venue is near the 2,3,4,D,N, and R trains. So many options! Union Hall has a fully-stocked bar, food options, a fireplace, a library, and two bocce ball courts. It’s considerably nicer than your average swamp.

Unfortunately, due to the bar atmosphere, the Muppet Vault is only for fans 21 and over. So feel free to bring your parents, bring your grandparents, and bring your pointed collars.

Want to be among the first to know about future Muppet Vaults? Join our Muppet Vault Mailing List below, and get a monthly notice containing the date, location, and theme for the next Vault! We promise to keep your email addresses to ourselves, and you won’t get more than one or two emails from us per month.

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Please note that this mailing list is completely separate from our new ToughPigs Mailing List, which you should also sign up for!

12 years later, Nimoy himself made a very brief cameo in an episode of Muppets Tonight, which we are pleased to find is on YouTube. Because the future, as Star Trek always made us wish, is now. You can watch Leonard Nimoy and Miss Piggy below:

Leonard Nimoy wasn’t just a great actor, a great director, and a great sport, he was also an icon. And as sad as we are to have lost him, we’re very pleased that he had a few brushes with the Muppets and that he lived long and prospered.

]]>http://www.toughpigs.com/rip-leonard-nimoy/feed/0Don’t Eat the Pictures II: A “Cookie Thief” Reviewhttp://www.toughpigs.com/cookie-thief/
http://www.toughpigs.com/cookie-thief/#commentsThu, 26 Feb 2015 15:56:37 +0000http://www.toughpigs.com/?p=34429Picture this: a Muppet innocently visits a cultural site, gets falsely accused of stealing paintings, is unjustly punished by a Saturday Night Live alumnus, and then has to sneak into a prestigious location to clear their name and catch the true thief.

Now imagine Sesame Street does the same thing the following year. (Ba-dum-tshh.)

Okay, all kidding aside, The Cookie Thief is a fun way to spend 45 minutes (the rest of the episode is padded with traditional Sesame interstitials). It’s got wonderful visuals and the classic Sesame sense of humor that makes the special breeze by. For those who haven’t seen the special, let me give you a quick summary: Cookie Monster, Elmo, and Chris visit the Museum of Modern Cookie, home to the greatest collection of cookie art. (That’s art where cookies are the subjects, not the medium. If you want to see pretty cookies, you’ve got to go to BuzzFeed like everybody else.) At first, Cookie Monster has trouble controlling his hunger-based urges, which runs him afoul of a museum security guard (played expertly by Carnegie Hall star Rachel Dratch), but he quickly learns to control himself before any art has been om-nom-nommed into oblivion. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for elements of museum guide Prairie Dawn, whose cookie-shaped badges and beret are gradually consumed. To be honest, I actually feel like Prairie has this one coming. After all these years, she should know Cookie Monster’s tendencies.

But as Cookie Monster calms his impulses, the museum’s best-known work, the Muncha Lisa, is stolen! And even though he was nowhere near the painting, neither was the guard, so she immediately blames our fuzzy-and-blue hero, just on a hunch. Despite Cookie Monster’s pleas of innocence, she dispatches the Cookie Patrol (Keystone Kops-style penguin museum guards, which is a great use of Muppet penguins) to kick him out of the building, but he manages to escape their clutches! So then it’s up to Cookie Monster and his friends to clear his name and find the true cookie thief! (Though to be honest, Cookie should have just headed to the nearest branch of the ACLU. Being accused of a crime and then thrown out of a museum just because the security guard claims to “know his type” would probably warrant a big enough lawsuit to keep him in chocolate chips for the rest of his life.) Along the way, there are some really funny fantasy sequences about the creation of these works of art featuring a certain cute, furry little artist’s assistant as good as he’s ever been, leading up to the apprehension of the true cookie thief!

I’m bad, I know. (But the real thief is fun, too, especially if you like a certain 1960’s Hanna-Barbera cartoon about solving supernatural mysteries and dogs with speech impediments.)

I may not know cookie art, but I know what I like. And I like seeing Cookie Monster get into goofy hijinks. If you like seeing Cookie Monster get into getting into said hijinks, you’ll enjoy The Cookie Thief. If you like seeing clever, detailed parodies of iconic works of art, you’ll enjoy The Cookie Thief. If you’re a curmudgeonly Muppet fan, and dislike both of these things, you should still see The Cookie Thief, if because it may be Fran Brill’s final work on Sesame Street performing Prairie Dawn, the character she made famous (with a very fitting final line). Sure, it may tread familiar ground to Muppet fans (namely the Tower of London and The Mallory Gallery), but it’s still fun to see characters being performed at their best, not to mention the serious amount of cookie art that could warrant multiple viewings on its own. All in all, it’s a pretty good way to spend an hour with some beloved characters. At least I don’t think my time’s been stolen, anyway.

]]>http://www.toughpigs.com/cookie-thief/feed/0Fair Play 2015http://www.toughpigs.com/fair-play-2015/
http://www.toughpigs.com/fair-play-2015/#commentsMon, 23 Feb 2015 16:20:50 +0000http://www.toughpigs.com/?p=34458Once again, because we are gluttons for punishment, your pals from ToughPigs attended the annual Toy Fair (as we have almost every year since 2008) to catch a glimpse at all of the Muppet, Sesame Street, and Henson Company merchandise coming to toy store shelves in the next year.

I say “gluttons for punishment” because we’re often disappointed at the lack of Muppet toys. Previous years were especially bleak, considering the small amount of new Muppet stuff in preparation for Disney’s theatrical Muppet films. This year, there’s nothing quite so huge to promote, so our expectations were a little lower. And we were rewarded with a good mix of exciting stuff, the same old merch, and a few surprises.

Let’s get started!

Starting at the Hasbro showroom, which is off-site from the rest of Toy Fair and accessible by invitation only (or by sneaking in through the ventilation ducts, as we did), we saw the latest Sesame Street swag. The feature toy was “Play All Day Elmo”, and it very well might take over the world, Terminator-style.

As demonstrated on the box, Play All Day Elmo knows when you’re holding his nose, making him clap, holding him while you run or jump, and he knows when you’re playing the games he’s suggesting through his realistically-moving mouth. I am not 100% convinced that it isn’t sentient, so maybe hide him in the closet while you sleep. In all seriousness, the technology for these toys is out of this world, and it’s hard not to be impressed by what can be accomplished with a toy like this.

There wasn’t much else new to us at Hasbro, apart from some bath toys and a cute briefcase-style box that holds letters of the alphabet. Above, you’ll see some of the plush available, including the larger stuffed animals, which includes the giant Snuffy doll that we saw last year and I promised myself I would buy. Because look at him! LOOK.

Ty, the toy company that had a huge Kermit the Frog display last year, relegated their two last Kermits to a shelf hidden amongst their huge stuffed animal collection. It was sad seeing these two little guys nearly forgotten after getting such a great spotlight last year. Maybe Ty is hoping the loneliness will bring them together so they can copulate and multiply. Weird, but slightly less depressing.

Also with nothing new is Manhattan Toy, the company who seems to be single-handedly keeping the Fraggle Rock franchise from dying out. Their Fraggle dolls and puppets continue to be the only Fraggle Rock merchandise we could find, even though we have word that some of the toys (like Junior Gorg, Traveling Matt, and [surprise surprise] Mokey) have been discontinued. That giant Red doll looks like she just heard the news, and is exhausted from holding up the fort for the past six Toy Fairs.

Aside from Hasbro, the other big Sesame Street licensee is Gund, who handles most of the plush toys. The highlight of their booth were these HUGE versions of the Elmo and Cookie Monster “Take Along” dolls. They’re just as soft and cuddly as the rest of the line (which includes normal-sized versions of Snuffy, Abby, Zoe, and more), but just a little less portable.

These thingamabobs are called “Wavers”, and they’re like wands that speak when you shake them. Elmo says a letter of the alphabet each time you wave him, and the Count (voiced by Jerry Nelson!) counts all the way up to 20. They’re actually really cute and probably affordable, so they’ll make great gifts for the Sesame fan in your life who has enough plush.

I also really liked these beanbags. I know, they’re just regular beanbags with the characters’ faces on them, but there’s something charming about the simplicity of it all. Gund could slap a Grover face on a shovel and I’d still want to buy it.

Gund also had these supercute gingerbread men, obviously because they’re trying to corner the stocking stuffer market. What aren’t you telling us about your master plan, Gund???

The coolest thing at the Gund booth was this Cookie Monster toy, which reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” in its entirety out loud. But not just that, the head sways back and forth to make him look more alive as he’s reading, and the mouth moves along with the words (as opposed to just flapping open when there’s dialog). It’s actually really impressive, and the closest you’ll probably get to having the real Cookie Monster read you a bedtime story.

Madame Alexander had a pretty impressive and surprising display of new Muppet toys last year. The puppets (which we reviewed a few months ago) were on display, but no sign of the full-bodied dolls. Luckily, they were in Madame Alexander’s catalog, and we were pleased to see that the designs (especially Animal) have improved greatly compared to last year‘s prototypes.

Our favorite toys on display this year were the Funko Sesame Street figures! We spotted the Super Grover at New York Comic Con (which we’ve been assured will be released with the first wave of these toys later this year), but five more were available for our gawking purposes at Toy Fair.

Ernie’s looking mighty cute, with Rubber Duckie in tow.

Cookie Monster is looking surprisingly on-model for a toy that’s supposed to emphasize certain attributes. Maybe he just looks good with a giant head?

Bert’s looking a little worried, but he shouldn’t, since he’s nailing that unibrow look.

Oscar, looking as trashy as ever, with Slimey at his feet.

The most awesome one has got to be Snuffy. It’s hard to tell, but Snuffy is actually a couple inches taller than the other figures, making him look massive in comparison. And all is right with the world.

The Funko catalog shows off the entire first wave of Sesame toys, which also includes Grover, Elmo, the Count, and a 6″ tall Big Bird. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see these guys in the flesh. I mean, felt. I mean, vinyl.

The absolute biggest news out of Toy Fair comes from Diamond Select. They’ve got two huge Muppet lines coming, but unfortunately, they did not allow for photos. It was very clandestine, as the Diamond representative showed us the prototypes behind a black curtain. Thankfully, we took some good notes, and we’ll share as much as we can with you.

Their first line is a new series of Muppet Minimates. Minimates are small figures, usually sold in two-packs, with simple molds and a few points of articulation. The full Muppet lineup includes: Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Scooter, Robin, Camilla, Gonzo (with a daredevil costume variant), The Swedish Chef (with a “culinary catastrophe” variant), and Bunsen and Beaker (with explosion disaster variants). The toys will also come with some accessories.

Also from Diamond is a line called Muppet Select. These toys will look much closer to the puppet designs, and will be in scale with the other “Select” toys from Diamond (including, for example, the Marvel Select action figures). We were able to see sculpts of the Kermit and Fozzie Bear toys, and their designs looked incredibly spot-on. They’ll definitely be a great upgrade from the Palisades figures. The Muppet Select toys will be sold in two-packs and will also contain accessories.

Of course, we’ll share photos and additional information about the Diamond Select toys once they provide us with them.

There was more to see, especially some assorted Sesame Street merchandise, but we decided it wasn’t worth our time to catalog every little thing with an Elmo face on it. However, it was worth the time of the Muppet Stuff blog, and you can see the stuff we missed over there.

And as always, we’ll end our Toy Fair coverage with our wish for more cool Muppet stuff next year!

Finally, Sesame Street has produced a short film that capitalizes on the plight of the American actor, who is best known for a bird-related role, filmed in one continuous shot on the streets of New York City.

I don’t know about you, but it sounds like an Oscar bait role to me. Feel free to define “Oscar” however you want here.

Caroll Spinney stars in this new video from Sesame and Mashable, spoofing Birdman! Enjoy!

Eagle-eyed viewers may recognize one of the names in the credits on the YouTube page. Yes, this bit was co-written by ToughPigs’ own Joe Hennes! The fans are slowly infiltrating the Muppet world, one YouTube video at a time!

We here at ToughPigs HQ were shocked and appalled to learn that the 87th annual Academy Awards were lacking in Muppet nominations. So we decided to redefine the old adage, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” for our own purposes and create our own awards show. And so The Snuffy Awards were born!

We created 15 categories surrounding the films of 2014 (notably, Muppets Most Wanted and I Am Big Bird), chose the nominees, and asked you to cast your votes to help choose the winners. And we were pleased to see hundreds of you make your voices heard (or at least your clicking fingers) to select the recipients of our little made-up awards ceremony.

We did our best to simulate a real awards show. We had a real Snuffy trophy made, we put ourselves on camera as your charismatic hosts (I know we’re no Neil Patrick Harris, but we’re a lot cheaper), and best of all, we found actual celebrities to act as presenters!

As you’ll see, our Snuffy Awards ceremony is full of familiar names and faces including Muppet performers, people from the Muppet fan community, the stars of Muppets Most Wanted, and more. We’re so incredibly grateful to our presenters, and we can’t thank them enough for their participation.

So without further ado, we at ToughPigs are proud to present the first ever Snuffy Awards! The only film award show that matters!

Lastly, congratulations to everyone involved with Muppets Most Wanted and I Am Big Bird! You may not be going home with an Oscar this year, but you still deserve all the accolades we wish we could give you.

What do you get when you put Big Bird, Michelle Obama, Billy Eichner, and Billy’s friend Elena in a Washington DC supermarket? Lots of shouting, some tips about healthy eating, FLOTUS pushing Billy around in a shopping cart, and a very confused Elena.

Funny Or Die just posted this special Billy On the Street video starring the unlikely quartet, and it’s hysterical. The supermarket segment is followed-up by Billy and Big Bird running down the street playing the “For a Dollar” game with strangers. Watching the video below counts as one serving of vegetables for the day.

]]>http://www.toughpigs.com/billy-on-the-street/feed/0The Cookie Art Countdownhttp://www.toughpigs.com/cookie-art/
http://www.toughpigs.com/cookie-art/#commentsMon, 16 Feb 2015 17:11:09 +0000http://www.toughpigs.com/?p=34374This week, Cookie Monster and the Sesame Street gang are off to the Museum of Modern Cookie to see some of history’s greatest Cookie Art in The Cookie Thief (airing on PBS throughout the week, check your local listings). According to what we’ve seen so far in trailers, Cookie Monster thinks the best piece in the whole museum is The Muncha Lisa, painted by esteemed Cookie Artist Leonardo da Crunchy. Unfortunately, Cookie is 100% wrong about Cookie Art. You see, while art is subjective, Cookie Art is not. Just as chocolate-chocolate chip is the definitive best cookie, there is an absolute best piece of cookie art, and The Muncha Lisa isn’t it. For you and Cookie Monster’s education, we here at ToughPigs have assembled a list of the twenty greatest pieces of Cookie Art currently on display at this museum. Use this list to help plan your visit to The Museum of Modern Cookie in case Prairie Dawn isn’t available to give tours.

Untitled, Cookie Warhol

Like the work of his pop art peer Andy Warhol, Cookie Warhol’s print uses well-known images and bright colors to make a compelling statement about modern culture and consumerism. Unfortunately, Cookie Warhol’s piece stumbles because the cookie he depicted looks a lot more like a doughnut, and doughnut doesn’t even start with the letter “C.”

Cookie Flowers, Vincent van Dough

Van Dough is an incredibly prolific Cookie Impressionist with several pieces in the Museum of Modern Cookie. His bold brush strokes are a striking component of Cookie Flowers, but his bizarre choice to draw cookie flowers without stems is simply confusing and contradicts everything we know about Cookie Botany.

Self-Portrait, Leonardo da Crunchy

Leonardo da Crunchy was a multitalented Cookie Artist who made several contributions to both the Cookie Arts and the Cookie Sciences in his long and prolific life. This so-called “selfie” was one of many the artist painted throughout his lifetime in an attempt to understand more about the structure of his visage. Da Crunchy’s notes on this work read “I’ve got eyes, ears, nose, mouth, cheeks, and chin each in its place: and they’re all part of one fine face.” That doesn’t make it any more interesting to look at a painting that’s basically just a yellow Gandalf.

Melancookie, Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch (pronounced like how you’d eat a cookie) painted several variants of Melancookie throughout his career, reflecting on the unhappiness that permeated his and his associates’ lives. For years, many have wondered if the subject of this painting is a man or a Muppet. However, few debate that Munch missed the point with this painting, as it is physically impossible to feel melancholy when surrounded by this many chocolate chip cookies.

The Cookie Eaters, Vincent van Dough

In this painting, van Dough tried to capture the experience of being a Cookie Peasant in the Cookie Netherlands. Legend says that he hired some of the ugliest Anything Muppets he could to pose as models for this piece to capture the authenticity. While van Dough’s early experiments with light would culminate in Cookie Impressionist masterpieces like Starry Cookie Night and Wheatfield with Cookies, Cookie Art Critics often find this painting to be a little half-baked. Wocka wocka.

Lady With Cookie, Leonardo da Crunchy

Leonardo da Crunchy painted several portraits of women throughout his long career, some more famous than others. This striking portrait of a friend of the Duke of Cookie Milan reminds the viewer that there once was a time when cookies were exclusively for the upper-class. Unfortunately, no one wants to be reminded of such a sad truth, and so this painting has fallen into obscurity.

The Melancholic Cookie-Singer, Cookie Joan Miro

Miro’s abstract work encourages the viewer to explore their own thoughts and perspectives. This painting, which to the average hungry viewer seems to depict a nose smelling the delicious aroma of cookies in a cookie jar, is one of his most famous. However, the idea of a giant floating nose was so terrifying that even Miro himself couldn’t sleep at night after thinking too hard about this piece.

Self-Portrait, Vincent van Dough

Though van Dough’s work is some of the best-known pieces of Cookie Art today, he was extremely unpopular during his lifetime and thus often felt very sad. This painting depicts him on a day where he was feeling very happy, probably because he had a delicious plate of cookies in front of him. Like much of van Dough’s work, this picture’s bold colors show a strong understanding not only of light, shadow, and texture, but also of which cookies made the best palette to paint with.

Girl with a Cookie Earring, Johannes Cookie Vermeer

Most of Vermeer’s Cookie Art depicts elaborate scenes of explorers, artists, and Honkers in intricately organized rooms, but Girl with a Cookie Earring displays a much more intimate tableau. For years, many have wondered about the inspiration for the girl’s wistful stare. Perhaps she, much like the viewer, is wondering why someone would wear a cookie as an earring.

Cookie-Icarus, Cooki Matisse

Originally a Cookie Painter, as Cooki Matisse’s vision worsened, he turned to collage as a new form of expression. In Cookie-Icarus, Matisse is able to capture the feeling when a monster’s pride leads him to believe he can eat cookies right out of the oven, only to get burned and drop cookies everywhere. However, many have wondered why Matisse didn’t prevent this by teaching his subject stronger executive functioning skills, perhaps through a regular series of film parody clips.

Vitruvian Gingerbread Man, Leonardo da Crunchy

For centuries, mankind has known that sweet gingerbread men are brown, tasty, and tan when fresh out of the pan. However, in a fascinating intersection between science, math, and art, da Crunchy sought to explore just how to bake an ideally-proportioned gingerbread man through this pen-and-ink sketch. This work still serves as an inspiration to Cookie Artists and bakers around the world, who now know much more about gumdrop buttons than anyone in da Crunchy’s time would have.

Starry Cookie Night, Vincent van Dough

This is unquestionably van Dough’s most celebrated work of Cookie Art, with gorgeous spirals of light and color that create an inspiring landscape. Said to represent the view from van Dough’s window, this Cookie Painting shows the artist’s dream of a world in which not only the moon, but also the stars, were cookies. For years, Cookie Art Critics have noted that there is no better visualization of van Dough’s expert knowledge of light and shadow than the black-and-white cookies depicted here.

The Persistence of Cookies, Salvador Cookie Dali

As a surrealist, Salvador Cookie Dali was known for challenging his audience’s expectations not only in his Cookie Art, but also in his daily life. This chilling painting, which presents a desert landscape where even cookies melt, forces the viewer to rethink everything they know about the cosmic order of cookies. Could there ever be a world where cookies are persistent, instead of ephemerally gobbled up by shaggy blue monsters whenever they appear? Maybe if the cookies were this…melty. That’s just gross.

Untitled, Piet Cookie Mondrian

Piet Cookie Mondrian’s work often confuses Cookie Art novices, who wonder what meaning there could possibly be behind simple blocks of color. However, his non-representational form blends Cookie Architecture and Cookie Art into a delicious sandwich cookie of style. The juxtaposition here of different shades of brown is a notable departure from Cookie Mondrian’s usual style, as is the mix of round and square cookies. At the very least, the latter makes this painting an excellent tool to teach shapes to curious preschoolers.

Drowning Cookie, Cookie Lichtenstein

Pop art like Lichtenstein’s blurs the line between so-called “low Cookie Art” and “high Cookie Art,” encouraging the viewer to appreciate the small pieces of Cookie Art and the small emotional stresses that they meet each day. This piece, which expands a comic book panel to an enormous size, evokes the terrible feeling of breaking up with Brad and also being dunked into a glass of milk. Truly, it is an eye-opening look into the crises cookiekind experience every day.

Cookie Crosses the Delaware, Emanuel Cookie Leutze

As many know, in 1776, George Washington and Grover Monster crossed the Delaware in order to throw a surprise party for the Hessian soldiers on their day off. What many do not know is that Cookie Washington, the first president of Cookie America, did much the same in his quest to achieve independence from the King of Biscuit England and his disgusting “digestive biscuits.” As this painting shows, the journey was quite harrowing, as any cookie that fell into the Delaware River would be instantly dissolved. Leutze captures a sense of determination and duty on each cookie’s face that still inspires Cookie Patriots to this day.

The Cream, Edvard Munch

If it hasn’t been made apparent, much of Cookie Art is about sharing emotions with the viewer, which of course makes it an excellent addition to a preschool lifeskills curriculum. However, no piece conveys a feeling as raw and painful as The Cream does. The combination of the figure’s aghast expression and the swirling orange background makes the viewer feel the sense of pure terror that accompanies dropping one’s last cookie. No five-second rule can help the subject of this painting in this surreal and horrifying landscape. Munch’s choice to draw two best friends ignoring the shrieking figure further isolates the viewer in despair. The least they could do is play the “I eight the sandbox” game with him, you know?

Muncha Lisa, Leonardo da Crunchy

Okay, Cookie Monster. I’ll put your favorite at #3. Truly, the Muncha Lisa is an inspiring work of Cookie Art, which depicts a mysterious Muppet with a smile that has made audiences wonder for years just how many cookies has she already eaten. This painting presents more questions than it answers, as we still do not know exactly which Muppet this is or why she deserved to be painted in such a grandiose style. Such riddles have inspired countless viewers, leaving them hungry for more information.

Monster Before a Mirror, Pablo Picookie

In his later Cookie Art, Pablo Picookie painted scenes of massive national fear, such as Guernicookie. This earlier painting, which depicts a skinny gray monster eyeing himself in a mirror, expresses the much more everyday anxiety that one will see a startling monster in the mirror who will say “Wubba wubba wubba,” or, as they say in Spain, “Wubba wubba wubba.” Picookie’s colorful cubist style usually allows the viewer to see both sides of his subject simultaneously; this painting takes that further by showing us the monster’s inside.

The Brother of Mr. Noodle, Cookiee Magritte

Cookie Surrealism takes many forms. Unlike Salvador Cookie Dali, who painted elaborate dreamscapes of impossible objects, Cookiee Magritte simply juxtaposed unrelated everyday items to create a sense of confusion and unease in his viewer. This painting combines two things most people see every day—cookies and pantomime clowns—into a compelling image of man’s silence in the face of the things he most desires. This is a haunting piece of Cookie Art that gives the viewer much to…Look, I’ll drop the act here. This is a painting of Mr. Noodle’s Brother Mr. Noodle passed off as fine art. I don’t think anyone can argue this isn’t the best thing in this gallery.

Anyway, I hope you now know enough about Cookie Art to seem like an expert at your next fancy Cookie Dinner Party. Have any arguments? Let us know. And be sure to watch The Cookie Thief to learn even more about this fascinating subject.

Click here if you may not know art, but you know what you like on the ToughPigs forum!

You may not recognize Gary Owens by looking at him, but you’ve heard his voice many, many times. The prolific announcer and voiceover performer has sadly passed away at the age of 80.

Owens’s most famous role was that of the announcer of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. You also would have heard him as the original voice of Space Ghost, Blue Falcon, Powdered Toast Man, and even Batman on occasion. And as we all know, you don’t work in Hollywood for as long as he did without crossing paths with the Muppets a few times.

In 1969, he appeared on Sesame Street as “The Man from Alphabet”, a series of sketches that sadly did not test very well and never aired. But thanks to the magic of YouTube, you can watch his performance (and hear his distinctive voice) today.

He also narrated several Sesame Street animations, such as the “Secret Drawing” series, as seen below.

His Muppet connections don’t end there. He also provided voiceover work for the Sesame Street/Electric Company special “Out to Lunch“, the Muppet Movie promotional special The Muppets Go Hollywood, the Dinosaurs episode “Nuts to War“, and for the “UFO Mania” channel in Muppets From Space.

Gary Owens was an incredible talent, and we are proud that he’s connected so strongly to Sesame Street and the Muppets.

Weird, right?? Well, someone else read the article and found it slightly strange. That someone is Michael Frith, longtime Muppet designer. In addition to designing characters such as Fozzie Bear, Dr. Teeth, and the Fraggles, he also served as art director for many many many Muppet products. One of which (you guessed it!) was the Sesame Street toy kitchen set, including the Big Bird eggbeater.

Michael sent us an email with his memories of designing this particular toy. His message is below.

For, I dunno, 40 years? people have been asking me: Of which among all my Muppet inventions am I most proud? Well, pride IS a sin, but nevertheless my unhesitant answer has always been that there are two: in reverse order — the Doozers and… the Big Bird eggbeater. For EXACTLY the reasons that seem to have left Whitney Grace a little dazed and… disturbed.

Over the years I must have designed hundreds — thousands? — of Muppet/Sesame/Fraggle/Muppet Baby things: toys, dolls, games, television shows, books, posters, puppets, parade floats and balloons, albums, arena shows, electronics, clocks, DVDs, furniture, figurines, gymsets, music boxes, ride-ons, calendars, cookware, chinaware, sleepwear, flatware, hardware, software, wearware… it was always a kick to come in and see what area in which I had absolutely no expertise I’d get to come up with something that day. And make it as good as it could be (OK, within the always present limitations).

So when a Sesame Street cooking set for little kids consisting of, among other things an eggbeater, came up… I started doodling. What would make a good eggbeater? The only thing that seemed the right shape was… The Bird. All the right parts: a beak for the grip! An arm for the handle! Legs for the beaters! How perverse was that? But I couldn’t resist drawing it — and it made me laugh (which is why I was there in the first place). Surely someone along the way would say “WHAAT??” And that would be that. But no one did.

And by amusing coincidence, only a few weeks ago Bonnie Erickson at the Henson Legacy asked me for a list of my favorite toys from among all those we’d worked on. Brain death! Too many for me to even begin to sort out, I replied. Except for one…